The Kill Clause

5

TIM sped downtown, reaching the cluster of federal and courthouse buildings surrounding Fletcher Bowron Square. The squat cement and glass structure that passed for the Federal Building housed the warrant squad’s offices. Embedded in the front wall was a mosaic mural of women with square heads, which Tim had never quite grasped. The few times he’d taken Ginny to the office, she’d found the seemingly inoffensive mural unsettling; she’d keep her face turned into his side as they passed. Tim had always had a tough time deciphering her fears; also on her list were movie theaters, people over seventy, crickets, and Elmer Fudd.

He badged himself at the entrance, took the stairs to the second floor, and headed down a white-tiled corridor with spotty patchwork on the walls.

The office itself wasn’t much to look at, a haphazard throw of cubicles with metal schoolboy desks and fabric walls the color of Pepto-Bismol-laced vomit. For months admin had been promising the deputies a move to the more upscale Roybal Building next door, and for months it had been delayed. The bitching had reached a daytime-talk-show high, but it did little good; the deputies weren’t the first to note that federal bureaucracy moved like an arthritic tortoise, and, to be fair, shoddy office space had never been an impediment for deputies who preferred the street anyway. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings, crime stats, and most-wanted mug shots. John Ashcroft peered out from a portrait, all beady eyes and weak chin.

As Tim threaded through the cubicle labyrinth to his desk, the other deputies mumbled condolences and averted their eyes, precisely the type of reaction he’d come to work to avoid.

Bear approached him at a half sprint, filling the narrow space between desks. He was geared up-ballistic helmet under an arm, goggles around his neck, thin cotton gloves, a mike-mounted portable radio, two sets of matte black cuffs, a gaggle of hard plastic flex-cuffs fanning back off his shoulder, black steel-plate boots, a Beretta in a hip holster, a can of Mace, extra mags dangling from a shoulder rig on his right side, and a Level III tactical vest, more flexible than the old Christmas-platter trauma-plate specials, but still able to stop most rounds. Forty-plus pounds, not counting his primary entry weapon, a cut-down twelve-gauge pump-action smoothbore Remington, charged with double-aught buck and fitted with a fourteen-inch barrel and pistol-grip stock. Because of its absence of a shoulder stock, the shotgun kicked back thirty-five pounds of recoil to be absorbed by the arms; this was nothing for Bear, but Tim had seen more slender deputies get knocked ass over teakettle.

Like the rest of the Arrest Response Team members, Tim preferred the shoulder-mounted MP-5, which could better pinpoint targets. He thought Bear’s shotgun an unwise choice because it tied up both hands and presented penetration problems in a confined area, but Bear had grown partial to the Remington in his Witness Security days, and the shuck it gave when he racked a round could up a fugitive’s pucker factor considerably.

ART was composed of the best-trained deputy marshals. When the bell rang, they came off regular duty, threw on Kevlar, and enacted precision strikes to extract fugitives. Because of Tim’s Spec Ops background and his early record working up warrants, he’d been fortunate to make ART almost immediately after graduating the academy. During one fugitive roundup in his second month, his team had been hitting as many as fifteen hideouts a day, guns drawn on each entry. They kicked in the door half the time, and more than half the arrests were of armed men.

Bear hardly slowed as he reached Tim, and Tim turned and moved with him to keep from getting run over.

“We’re waiting on you. Downstairs. Now. We’ll have our pre-op briefing on the way over.”

“What happened?”

“Our CI dropped dime on a buddy who was supposed to mule a shipment of imported wine, clear it through customs, port of entry San Diego. His meet is with a guy who fits Heidel’s description.”

“Where?”

Bear’s gold marshal’s star flashed on its leather belt clip as he walked. “Martia Domez Hotel. Pico and Paloma.”

The mule would probably leave the drugs in a truck in the parking lot to eliminate the risk of getting caught with them in the room. At the motel he’d receive his first payment and get directed to the stash house, where the water would be extracted from the “wine,” leaving behind cocaine.

“How’d you pin location?”

“ESU. Heidel’s a smart bastard, been phone-swapping about every other day, but the CI coughed up his new number and it tripped a cell site right at Paloma and Twelfth.”

The Electronic Surveillance Unit had a unique set of tricks at its disposal when it came to tracking fugitives. Every cell phone emits a locating burst in its own distinct radio frequency, identifying itself to its network. If a top-clearance government agency like the Marshals Service or NSA is willing to commit outrageous resources, a nationwide cellular system can be programmed to pinpoint that burst to a local cell-system coverage area within a radius of less than three hundred yards. Because of the expense-a live cell-phone trace requires men and cars and global positioning satellite handsets-the obvious problems gaining legal clearance, and the reliance on private-sector telecommunication cooperation, the technology is used sparingly. They were going all out for Heidel.

“Martia Domez is the only hotel on the block, and the CI knew the meet was in a hotel Room 9,” Bear continued. “The meet wasn’t supposed to be until six P.M., but Thomas and Freed did a drive-by about twenty minutes ago and said someone’s already in the room. Two more men just showed up.”

“Either of them fit Heidel’s description?”

“No, but they look like the spicks who helped spring him. Thomas and Freed are sitting surveillance with the ESU geeks-I told them not to get eye-fucked, that we’d hot-ass over and take the mutts before Elvis leaves the building.”

Bear knocked the door open so hard it left a dent in the wall. The other deputies watched them with some envy as they headed out.

•The Beast waited for them downstairs. An old, retrofitted military ambulance, the Beast fitted twelve people on two opposing benches. Huge white letters stood out from the black paint-POLICE U.S. MARSHALS-almost exactly matching the T-shirts of the ART members. On all U.S. marshal-issue clothing and gear, POLICE appears in text larger than that proclaiming the agency name, because if given the choice in a high-heat situation, a deputy marshal doesn’t want to wait for the Average Citizen to remember what a deputy U.S. marshal is, and because POLICE is the international language for CAN SHOOT STRAIGHTER THAN YOU. The yellow lettering and embroidered badges also cut the odds considerably that the ART squad would be mistaken for a stickup crew.

Tim grabbed his gear from the trunk of his car, swung up into the back of the Beast, slapped a few fives, and sat between Bear and Brian Miller, the supervisory deputy in charge of ART and the Explosive Detection Canine Team. Miller’s best bitch, a black Lab named Precious after Jame Gumb’s poodle, nuzzled up to Tim’s crotch before Miller snapped her back into place.

Tim regarded the eight other men on the benches. He was not surprised to see both Mexican ART members present; knowing that Heidel’s two deputy-killing accomplices were Latino, Miller had pulled in the Hispanic talent as a preemptive strike against claims of racial retribution. A Cuban kid named Guerrera was sitting in for their regular number-three man, who was the brother-in-law of one of the deputies whom Heidel’s men had shot. Miller had taken every precaution to ensure a fair, lawful takedown and to make sure his men would survive the postop hernia-check scrutiny of the Los Angeles media.

There was some uneasy shifting on the bench opposite Tim. “Do me a favor. Don’t tell me how bad you feel about my daughter. I know you all do, and I appreciate it.”

Assorted nods and mumbles. Bear broke the awkwardness, pointing to Tim’s holstered. 357. “Hey, Wyatt Earp. When are you gonna get an auto and enter the twenty-first century?”

Bear’s little drill to show the others Tim wasn’t fragile. Appreciative, Tim played along. “The average gunfight lasts seven seconds, occurs within a range of fewer than ten feet. Do you know how many rounds are typically exchanged?”

Bear smiled at Tim’s mock-formal tone, and a few of the others joined him. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Four.” Tim removed the pistol and spun the wheel. “So the way I see it, I’m actually packing two spare bullets.”

The vehicle lumbered out of the parking lot, passing the Roybal Building’s metal sculpture composed of four immense human outlines that looked as though they’d been aerated by the crew that took down Bonnie and Clyde. The perforated men and the women with square heads left Tim with the strong impression that the government should stick to issuing budgets, not art.

Frankie Palton stretched his arm back over his head, grimacing, and Jim Denley snorted. “Your pimp beat you up?”

“No, the old lady brought home this goddamn Commie Sutra book, you know, all the sexual positions-”

Tim noticed that Guerrera’s MP-5 was set to three-round bursts, and he gestured with his middle and index fingers to his own eyes, then pointed at the gun’s knob. Guerrera nodded and clicked it to safety mode.

“-and she had me going in this goddamned Congress of the Cow last night, I shit you not, I thought I was gonna blow out my rotator cuff.”

Ted Maybeck leaned over and searched the floor at his feet. “Goddamnit. God dam nit.”

“What’s the fucking problem, Maybeck?” Miller said.

“I forgot my ram.”

“We have two battering rams and a sledge up front.”

“But not my ram. I brought that ram from St. Louis. It’s good lu-”

“Don’t say it, Maybeck,” Bear growled, looking up from loading his five-shot. “Don’t you fuckin’ say it.”

Tim turned to Miller. “What do we got?”

“Thomas and Freed are reconnoitering as we speak, getting the lay. ESU’s keeping an eye on the cell-phone signal, making sure it stays put. As we all know, Heidel is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If the four firearms he’s chosen to register are any indication, he prefers wheel guns. When we get him, don’t order him to put his hands behind him-he’ll probably have a pistol shoved in the back of his jeans. We want his hands on his head. According to witnesses, the two Hispanic males-”

“You mean Jose and Hose B?” Denley said.

“You fucking white guys,” Guerrera said. “Always an inferiority complex with your little glowworm dicks.”

“Big enough to fill your mouth.”

The two men extended their fists and bumped knuckles. If tactical precision was an ART requirement, the ability to generate repartee was not.

Miller’s voice rose to warning pitch. “The two Hispanic males have some gang insignia on the backs of their necks, and one might have a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his biceps. We don’t know for sure, but we’re counting on four men in the hotel room-Heidel, the two Hispanics, and the mule. Heidel’s got a common-law wife-fat bitch with limited English and several weapons violations. We couldn’t flip her last year, so she might be along for the ride. We have numerous statements from Heidel that he’s not going back to prison, so we can interpret that pretty easily.”

Heidel, like the majority of postconviction fugitives they tracked, had nothing to lose. He’d already had his day in court. If captured, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and that wouldn’t make him or his two deputy-killing buddies particularly docile takedowns. Once again the deputies would have to play by the rules even when the mutts did not. Mutts had no departmental guidelines, no deadly-force policy, no concern for bystanders or passersby. To fire they didn’t have to wait to get threatened with a gun or be in fear for their lives.

“We’re gonna go with an eight-man stealth, no-knock entry. No flash-bangs. Usual order through the door. LAPD’ll set a secondary perimeter, give us a nice visible uniformed presence, and we’ll have some cover rifles across the street. Guerrera, this ain’t Miami-the doors open in here, not out. Denley, remember you’re in Los Angeles. Through the door and straight back. Forget those vertical Brooklyn entrances.”

“Try to lose the Bobby De Niro accent while you’re at it,” Palton said. “No one buys that shit anyway.”

Denley jerked a thumb toward his chest. “You talkin’ to me?”

Tim cracked a smile, his first in days. He realized he hadn’t thought about Ginny in nearly five minutes-his first free five minutes since the incident. His return to the memory was jarring, but he felt steeled with the first bracings of hope. Maybe tomorrow he’d manage six minutes free and clear.

The Beast screeched over a curb and pulled into the back lot of a 7-Eleven. Two LAPD officers at his side, Freed crossed to them in a crouched under-fire run, though the motel was nearly two blocks away. One of the ESU geeks-matted hair, thick glasses, the whole nine yards-was right behind him, eyes glued to a handheld GPS unit, the faintly glowing readout showing that the locating RF pulse from Heidel’s mobile phone was not moving.

The ART squad exchanged greetings with the cops, and Miller thanked them for their presence and discussed where to set the perimeter. With ART huddled around, Freed unfurled a thick sheet of butcher paper across the hood of a nearby Volvo. On it he’d sketched a rough diagram of the hotel room’s interior based on a conversation with the manager and his own assessment of the lay of the roof and the locations of various vents and external pipes. They didn’t want to risk the visibility of taking a tour through a similar room. The blueprint was oddly elongated; a hallway led back from the front room to a bedroom and bathroom.

“The mule just showed up in a hoopty,” Freed said. His command of slang disguised the fact that he came from money, but his crisp enunciation still betrayed a private school education. “A kitted-up ’91 Explorer. Chrome rims, running boards, brush guards, curb feelers, air dam-the whole street-scum package. The back looks to be filled with boxes, but the windows are tinted, so we can’t ID if they’re wine crates or not. He’s been in there about five minutes. The two Hispanic males arrived in a Chevy, and we think whoever was waiting for them in the room came in a green Mustang. Plates check out to a Lydia Ramirez, Heidel’s girlfriend, so that’s a pretty good confirm.”

Maybeck was fondling the new battering ram, getting a feel for it like a pitcher with a new glove. “What do we got on the door?”

“It’s a circa-1920s building, so probably a metal door with a wood core. There’s no security screen to pop or anything.”

Tim took a look around. Empty 40s in brown paper bags. Weedy front yards. Broken windows. “They might’ve sold the doors when the neighborhood went to shit and the hotel switched ownership.”

“Double-check in case they’re hollow-core,” Bear said. “The last thing we need is you putting the ram through the goddamn door again.”

“Relax, Jowalski. That happened once, six fucking months ago.”

“Once was enough.”

Freed cleared his throat. “It’s a two-story building, room is center first floor, number nine. It’s got sliding-door access to a shitty pool in the back, and a back-facing bedroom window. Me and Thomas’ll cover the rear.”

Tim turned down the volume on his portable radio so he wouldn’t have to remember to do it on the approach. “Is the unit connected to the rooms on either side?”

“No.”

The adrenaline started to hammer pretty hard. The men had instinctively paired into their two-man cells, and they were bristling like fillies in the gate. Precious strained a bit on her leash.

Miller finished with the police officer and turned to his men. “All right, boys. Let’s Pearl Harbor his ass.”

•They shuffled along the outdoor walkway, stacked tight, guns low-ready across their chests, approaching from the hinge side of the door. Miller led with Precious, Maybeck hauling his ram close behind. Tim was in his customary position as the number one; Bear, his cell partner, would be through the doorway right after him. The other cells were pressed behind them. All black gear and weapons, their eyes bugged out with goggles, helmets low and sleek. More than a few fugitives had wet themselves after being surprised by a kick-in.

Bear was sweating heavy, holding the action back on the Remington, the ejection port empty and ready for when he wanted to jack the pump and make some noise.

Miller crept forward and tapped the far edge of the door frame. Precious went up on her hind legs, holding her paws back from the door, then followed Miller’s hand down across the bottom of the door and back up to the knob. If she smelled any explosive materials booby-trapping the door, she would have sat, but she just stood there panting. Miller took her off in a fast trot, clearing the way.

The door was particleboard, probably hollow, with cheap, white-metal hinges. Maybeck rested his hand on it, feeling its vibe. Deputy marshals and doors have a long-standing respect for one another.

Maybeck drew back the battering ram. A perfect moment of quiet. Then he swung it down, striking the locking mechanism. The dead bolt tore through the frame, the door banging in with a jagged Pac-Man bite missing at the knob. Maybeck flattened himself against the outside wall, and Tim swept past him, kicking through into the unknown, the heat of seven more bodies following him, all yelling.

“U.S. Marshals!”

“Down! Everybody down on the ground!”

“Policia! Policia!”

“Hands up! Get your fucking hands up!”

The mule’s head snapped up. He’d been counting hundreds into a wrinkled brown paper bag. Three cell phones lay on the dinged-up wood table beside the cash, one of them silently emitting the telltale burst.

Tim was aware of the shirtless male to his right-a Joaquin y Leticia tattoo inked across his left pectoral-but he went for the first immediate threat, shoving the mule over and getting him proned out. “Spread your arms! Spread your arms!”

The room shook with thundering boots and commands as the other ART members poured in, moving threat to threat. Tim frisked the mule quickly around the waist and sides to make sure he couldn’t get to a weapon immediately, then stepped over him and let Bear move up to take custody. Tim’s head pivoted with the MP-5, cheek mashed to the shoulder stock, sighting down the dark hall.

Two deputies were on Joaquin, four more spreading along the walls, MP-5s raised. One of them took over the mule for Bear, then Bear was at Tim’s back, one hand touching his shoulder, stutter-stepping after him into the dark hall. Behind them Joaquin struggled and cursed as the others finished clearing the front room.

“U.S. Marshals!” Tim yelled down the hall. “You’re surrounded! Step out into the hall! Step out into the hall!”

Two more men waited behind Tim and Bear, eager to penetrate the rear rooms. The hall stood dim and silent, a fifteen-yard stretch back to the open opposing doors of the bedroom and bathroom. No closets or corners behind which to seek cover-reasons veterans sometimes balked at hallways and called them fatal funnels.

Tim moved swiftly down the hall, men stacking up behind, still shouting commands. The place smelled of rotting carpet and dust. As Tim neared the two open doors, Heidel and Lydia Ramirez leaned barely out from either side, pistols lowered at Tim’s head. It was an impeccably timed move; Tim couldn’t get a shot off on one without the other’s opening up on him. The narrowness of the hall cut off Bear’s angle behind him.

Heidel’s face was pressed hard against the inside jamb of the bedroom door, so his voice came out slurred. “That’s right, motherfucker! Keep moving!” The gun flicked to Bear, still behind Tim. “You! Big guy! Back the fuck off.”

Heidel was sporting what appeared to be a Sig Sauer. He carried a wheel gun, a Ruger from the looks of it, in a shoulder holster under his left armpit.

“Come here, come here!” Heidel’s greedy hand bunched Tim’s shirt.

Bear chambered a round, his massive fists encompassing the shotgun like a pool cue. “Release that federal officer! I said release that federal officer!”

Without raising the MP-5, Tim thumbed the release, dropping the clip on the floor just before Heidel whipped him around the corner into the bedroom. Heidel slammed Tim against the wall and pressed the Sig into his cheek so hard it crushed his flesh against the bone. Heidel wore a Philly Blunt skullcap pulled low over his eyebrows. A wispy goatee, light blond, barely stood out from his pasty white skin. Another man, a big Hispanic male with a snake tattoo encircling his biceps, snatched the MP-5 from Tim with one hand and lifted Tim’s Smith amp; Wesson from the holster with the other. He looked at the MP-5’s empty receiver and threw the gun to the side in disgust, though it still housed a round in the chamber.

More shouting farther down the hall. Heidel stuck his arm out and fired blindly into the hall until the Sig’s slide locked to the rear. He threw the empty gun aside, drew his Ruger, then gestured for Tim’s Smith amp; Wesson, which he jammed into his empty shoulder holster as a backup. He shoved the Ruger up against Tim’s face.

“Anybody fucking moves, I’m wasting your guy!” Heidel yelled. “Come on, baby. Come on.” His girlfriend stepped across the hall into the bedroom, and Heidel slammed and locked the door. Tim rotated slightly into the grinding pain of the pistol to get the lay of the room and noticed the fire door connecting to the hotel room next door. Faulty intel.

Heidel yelled at the closed door, “Anyone comes through here, I shoot the fed! I’m not fucking around.” He turned, panicky, and shoved the big man toward the fire door. “Move it, Carlos.”

Carlos flung open the fire door and stepped through. Another bedroom, another long hall. Heidel pushed Tim forward, following Carlos’s trail. The big man had a revolver tucked in the back of his jeans, the pearl handle glimmering. Tim slowed a bit, falling back. Heidel and his girlfriend fired idiotically at the walls behind them.

“Move it, cabron,” Lydia screamed. She shoved him, and Tim faked a fall.

Carlos kept running, disappearing around the corner.

“Get up! Get the fuck up!” Lydia stood over Tim, unbound breasts swaying fat and free beneath a stretched-out man’s undershirt. Heidel was behind her, providing rear cover.

Tim pushed up onto his hands and knees, then rose. His holster hung empty from his belt. “Get him the hell up and moving!” Heidel shouted.

Tim crossed his arms, his left hand high on his biceps. When Heidel raised the Ruger to his forehead, as Tim knew he would, he snapped his hand over, grabbing the wheel tightly so it couldn’t rotate, and kicked the girlfriend in the stomach as hard as he could. She grunted loudly and dropped, maintaining her clutch on the pistol.

Heidel was yanking the trigger, not yet realizing that the cylinder couldn’t turn, the barrel digging into the middle of Tim’s forehead. With his right hand Tim reached across and pulled his own Smith amp; Wesson from its limp dangle in Heidel’s shoulder holster, then calmly fired a shot into Heidel’s chest. The back-spray of blood misted Tim’s face, and Heidel fell away, arms spreading out and up like a kid’s first pass at a snow angel. Tim kept his grip on the Ruger, still held up and backward, aimed at his own head. He pivoted quickly, saw that Lydia had found her feet, and he fired a shot through her chest and one through her face before her upswinging pistol arm reached horizontal.

She collapsed with a gurgle, a shudder of flesh and ripped cotton jersey.

Tim spun the Ruger and holstered it, keeping his Smith amp; Wesson at the ready. He ran down the hall, shoulder scraping a wall, and entered the front room just as Carlos banged through the sliding door onto the hotel’s pool deck. With the exception of Freed and Thomas, all the cover rifles were out front, and the LAPD’s secondary perimeter was a block away. Tim sprinted through the sliding door in pursuit, but Carlos was gone. Thomas was running toward Tim, shotgun at his side, while Freed kept rear cover by the pool. Having unexpectedly moved the length of four rooms and two hallways, Carlos had caught them off guard.

Without slowing, Thomas gestured to a still-swinging gate to Tim’s left. “Come on!”

Tim followed after him into a narrow alley. Puffs of smoke rose from the window of a restaurant kitchen, clinging to the walls. Carlos was halfway down the alley in a dead sprint for the traffic-heavy street ahead. Tim passed Thomas quickly. Carlos burst out onto the street and saw the LAPD vehicle at the far curb, the small crowd of bums and passersby drawn to the police perimeter, now pointing and shouting. Twenty yards behind, Tim cleared the alley just as Carlos froze up in surprise. The two young cops at the perimeter looked more shocked than Carlos.

Carlos reached for the revolver tucked in the small of his back, and Tim stopped running, raised his Smith amp; Wesson, and sighted on center mass. He double-tapped Carlos between the shoulder blades, then put his last bullet through the back of his head in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

When Carlos slapped the pavement, what was left of his head sent out a spray like a dropped melon.